cleverpun’s 2019 Reading Journal: August · 9:55pm Sep 10th, 2019
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
The Radch Empire is a civilization of humans who spend their time annexing other planets. Their military force is incredibly advanced. Each ship is run by an AI, and has hundreds of “ancillaries”; human bodies that have been medically killed and revived, their thoughts replaced by those of the ship’s AI.
Breq used to be a ship—the Justice of Toren—a military vessel with hundreds of ancillary and human personnel. Twenty years ago, something happened that splintered one of her ancillary bodies off from the rest. She is now an AI in a human body, still with all her knowledge and implants and memories, but only a single person. And she wants a very simple, human thing; revenge. Specifically against Anaander Mianaai, the leader of the Radch (who like ships, is composed of multiple bodies). And to do that, she needs to find a particular object on a frozen backwater planet.
This is a story that weaves a lot of worldbuilding into its plot. The culture, fashion, language, mores, and so much more of not just the Radch, but of multiple human worlds are all important and highly developed. The main character is knowledgeable enough to mimic whatever culture she finds herself in, but even an AI can’t do it perfectly.
It also does not give up any answers or details bluntly. Radch language doesn’t have differing pronouns for gender, so the narration only refers to characters as “she”. And because this is far, far in the future (far enough that the Radch have constructed a full Dyson Sphere in the center of their empire), gender as a concept doesn’t mean the same things it used to anyway. Every character has an ambiguous gender as a result. The chapters alternate between flashbacks telling the reader how Breq became a single body, and her present-day search for revenge. Eventually the two converge, but it takes a while. I didn’t have a full grasp of the plot’s trajectory until a hundred pages in. There’s a lot of high concept, complex ideas represented here. The main character’s situation—an AI hive mind reduced to a single body—is almost an entire story in itself.
Despite this vagary, however, the story is still compelling. All the worldbuilding and plotting was just subtle enough to keep me going, though at certain points it certainly moved slower than I would have liked. As I mentioned, the first hundred pages or so are all setup and backstory, and the plot doesn’t really kick into high gear until the final half or third of the book.
The main problem with it is that, despite the many high concepts and complicated ideas at play in its world, it doesn’t ask any questions of the reader. Class division, status-chasing, gender roles, dystopias, lack of privacy, the cultural role of clothing and music, the morality of creating ancillaries, annexation, xenophobia…there’s a dozen important moral and philosophical ideas woven into the fabric of the world. And yet, the story doesn’t ask the reader to confront their views on any of these things. The plot sort of paints the conservative/more social-climber minded as being bad, and the more liberal/open-minded as good. But it’s only barely lingered upon with just a few characters. And ultimately, because of the nature of Radch society, neither group really has any power anyway (which is also touched upon, but only briefly).
Overall, it is a book worth recommending; It creates an interesting world and provides compelling details about it, but mostly uses that world to tell a revenge story. For a story with so many lofty concepts in it, I’m surprised it didn’t ask more questions of the audience.
And thanks to Nemryn for recommending it to me.
Next up: The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen
It was a decent story with a lot of cool ideas, but after I finished it I had no real interest in reading the sequel.
5119285 I'm not sure how I feel about the sequels yet. On the one hand, now that all this worldbuilding is done, the sequels should have more space for a more complex plot and to ask questions of the reader. But if those things weren't in this one, it's not exactly likely they'll show up later.
That a very science fictiony sounding story.
As far as concepts to explore, that seems exactly my jam.
And, while the plot may not have asked you to think much about the setting, it does seem to have avoided the kind of high concept sci-fi writing I most hate: where the main character is a pinball or vehicle to exposit the setting. I like my protagonists to protag darn it, and it sounds like Breq does.
5119298
Yeah, that was mostly my thoughts as well. I mean, if the author really liked writing non-worldbuilding stuff the first novel would have a lot less of it. So either the next book would be lots more worldbuilding or just kind of empty.
5119364 That is definitely a problem some science fiction has; instead of being a story, it's more of a worldbuilding essay.
I actually encounter such "stories" as fanfiction more than anything else. I usually refer to them as "blog post stories" in that context.